The best way to ensure that hardware is compatible with pfSense software is to
buy hardware from the pfSense Store that has been tested and known to work
well with pfSense. The hardware in the store is tested with each release of
pfSense software and is tuned for performance.

A wide variety of wired Ethernet cards (NICs) are supported by FreeBSD, and are
thus compatible with pfSense firewalls. However, not all network adapters are
created equal. The hardware can vary greatly in quality from one manufacturer to
another.

We recommend Intel PRO/1000 1Gb and PRO/10GbE 10Gb NICs because they have
solid driver support in FreeBSD and they perform very well. Most hardware sold
in the pfSense Store contains Intel NICs.

Of the various other PCIe/PCI cards supported by FreeBSD, some work fine. Others
may have problems such as VLANs not working properly, not being able to set
speed or duplex, or poor performance. In some cases, FreeBSD may support a
particular NIC but, with specific implementations of the chipset, driver support
or may be poor. When in doubt, search the pfSense Forum for experiences of
others using the same or similar hardware.

When a firewall requires the use of VLANs, select adapters that support VLAN
processing in hardware. This is discussed in Virtual LANs (VLANs).